Walk Back

Well, it appears Mitt Romney doesn’t necessarily want to create more Iran daylight with the administration than he already has.

Here’s part of his interview with CBS News, in which he declines to repeat his adviser’s earlier words:

Jan Crawford: Well Governor one of your aides said this morning that you would respect Israel’s decision to take military action against Iran on its own. Does that mean you’re giving the green light to Israel to bomb Iran?

Mitt Romney: I’ll use my own words – and that is I respect the right of Israel to defend itself and we stand with Israel. We’re a nation, two nations that come together in peace and that want to see Iran being dissuaded from its nuclear folly. So let me use my own words in that regard.

Jan Crawford: What does that mean to you then that you respect their decision? I mean, can you explain that a little more?

Mitt Romney: Well I think because I’m on foreign soil I don’t want to be creating new foreign policy for my country or in any way to distance myself in the foreign policy of our nation. But we respect the right of a nation to defend itself.

Jan Crawford: But would you or would you not then support Israel’s bombing of Iran?

Mitt Romney: Well again, that would be statement which would be of a different nature than what our nation has already expressed with regard to Iran. What we have said and with which I concur is that we should use every diplomatic and political vehicle that’s available to us to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear capability state. Those actions should be executed with the greatest speed we can muster. If all those options fail and they’ve not all be executed, they’ve not all failed entirely at this stage, if all those options fail then we do have other options and we don’t take those other options off the table. But that’s as far as I’m willing to go in terms of discussing this matter while on foreign soil.